1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer data exchange and more specifically to preparing data for relational databases.
2. Description of Related Art
Many applications and systems store data and information in electronic formats. A lot of electronically stored information, such as information conveyed via the world wide web, is stored in hierarchical formats such as in the eXtended Markup Language (XML). Some applications and systems, however, store electronic information in relational databases. Compatibility between these two data storage techniques is achieved by, for example, XML data shredding, which is the process of producing data in a relational table format from data contained in hierarchical, usually XML data, formats. Many applications, such as life sciences applications or transaction logging applications, transfer large amounts of data in an XML format. Inefficiencies in shredding large XML documents present problems in these fields.
XML documents that have a size that is the same order of magnitude or that is larger than the physical memory of the computer system processing the document, or larger than the size of the relational database log storing the information, create processing inefficiencies that greatly hamper the ability to exchange such large data collections between XML formats and relational database formats.
A need therefore exists to address the above problems in shredding large hierarchical data instances into relational database tables.